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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The TV and movie industry is littered with actors who were tipped to be ‘the next big thing’ only to end up with non-speaking parts in the latest Jean-Claude Van Damme film. Predicting stardom is a precarious business but Alexander Skarsgård has as good a chance as any of making it big. Movie-star good looks? Check. Sensible career choices so far? Check. An engaging and intelligent personality? Check. Family pedigree in the business? Well, his dad is Hollywood star Stellan Skarsgård, so: Check. He’s also recently starred in two of the most critically acclaimed and successful TV series to come out of the US last year, True Blood (from the creator of Six Feet Under) and Generation Kill (from the creators of The Wire). Both series will be on Channel 4 this autumn.

It was almost all so different, though. As a child actor, Skarsgårdturned his back on the industry aged 13. It was only after a seven-year hiatus that he decided to give acting another go. It was, it would seem, a good decision. Just how good, the next few years will reveal.

You’re from an acting background, and obviously your dad [Stellan Skarsgård] is hugely successful. Did you grow up proud of his level of success, or did you just take what he did for granted?He wasn’t that big a star when I grew up. The thing that brought him to Hollywood was Breaking the Waves, the Lars von Trier movie, which was in 1996. I was already 20 years old by that point. Growing up, my father was working at a theatre in Stockholm, so he was mostly a stage actor. He did movies as well, but smaller Swedish movies. I’ve got younger siblings, and it was different for them. They did more of the travelling around the world, being on sets and all of that exotic stuff. For me, it was running around backstage at the theatre, and I didn’t really think much about it.

On the subject of your siblings, a few of them have gone into acting as well, haven’t they?Yeah. I’ve got a brother who’s two months old, and it’s kind of difficult to say what he’ll do! But I’m the oldest, I’ve got a brother who’s four years younger than I am, and he’s an actor back home in Sweden. And I have another brother who’s 18, who’s working doing movies in Sweden right now as well.

How old were you when you started acting?Seven. I did my first movie when I was seven, and then I worked for about six years, doing movies and television in Sweden. But then I quit when I was 13, and didn’t work at all for seven years.

Why did you quit?This was in 1989, and back then in good old Sweden, we only had two TV channels. I did a movie for television there, and whatever was on, people would watch, so the impact that had back then was huge. Suddenly people recognised me wherever I went, and it just made me very uncomfortable. It was a weird age to become famous. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I was very self-conscious and stressed out about the whole situation. I just wanted to be one of the guys, so I quit, basically. I didn’t have the urge to act for seven years.

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